Once a staple of circus sideshows, military service and gang activity, tattoos have become more commonplace today among people of all walks of life, at all stages in their lives.

But while the social attitude toward body art may be changing, there are still mixed reactions to tattoos in professional settings, something Barbara Maszk doesn’t see changing soon.

“It is complicated. Today, everywhere you go people are sporting tattoos,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve crossed the bridge for face tattoos, but sleeves may be more accepted depending on the business.”

Maszk works for SITE Staffing and has worked most of her career in human resources, and she said people entering the workforce now are significantly more likely to have a tattoo than somebody entering the workforce 20 years ago. Because of that, professional standards are being reconsidered.

Whether a tattoo is going to be acceptable in the workplace, Maszk said, comes down to four things: the content, size and placement of the tattoo, and the climate of the company.

Her advice to those entering the workforce is to avoid tattoos in places others are likely to notice first, like the face and hands, and to avoid anything potentially offensive.

“We’re still not at a point where we see something and we don’t make a judgment on it,” she said.

Teresa Emery, also a longtime human resources professional, said a lot of the people she helps to find work have tattoos. Emery is the employment program manager at the Milwaukee Careers Cooperative, a nonprofit employment agency.

Emery said she has noticed the changing attitudes toward tattoos first-hand. She recently placed a young woman in a caregiver role who had a flower tattoo spanning her face, neck and body, an employment match she was surprised was successful.

“I thought the tattoo was going to be a problem,” she said.

But the job placement worked out: The employer didn’t mind the tattoo at all, Emery said.

Jonathan Reiter, owner of Solid State Tattoo, 2660 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., said he doesn’t tattoo faces and is hesitant about hands. He said he tries to consider the person’s age and career trajectory.

“I don’t know that any young person thinks about that logically, and that’s where we come in sometimes,” Reiter said.

Ricardo Torres, a tattoo artist at Body Ritual, 1459 N. Farwell Ave., said he has similar criteria for those hyper-visible locations. He doesn’t tattoo faces, necks or hands for people getting their first tattoos, and said he knows other artists in the area who have the same reservations.

Torres, whose arms, hands and head are decorated with tattoos, said he began getting them when he was 16 years old. He said he had regrets about some of the early ones, and has a few cover-up tattoos to prove it.

Though Reiter doesn’t think 18-year-olds are much different from when he was growing up, he said he has seen the industry change in the 21 years he’s been tattooing.

There was a time, not that long ago, when tattooing was illegal in Milwaukee. A hepatitis outbreak (and, Reiter suspects, Milwaukee’s proximity to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center) led the city to pass an ordinance banning tattooing in the city. Some other cities enacted similar bans, including New York.

But once a 1996 state law requiring that tattoo artists be licensed addressed the practice’s health concerns, the city lifted the ban. By 1998, tattooing was again legal in Milwaukee.

One of the first shops to offer tattoos after the lifting of the ban was Body Ritual, which owner David Weir said not all Milwaukee businesses were excited about.

“Milwaukee wasn’t a very progressive city,” Weir said. “People were worried (the tattoo shops) would bring more crime.”

Weir said tattoos were a signature of the subculture, so it took time for people to come around, and he thinks most people have. And as social attitudes have changed, so too have corporate policies.

In 2014, Starbucks revisited its tattoo policy, allowing visible tattoos (but not on the face or throat) after an employee began a petition asking for the change. In the following year, several other large corporations in various industries relaxed their dress codes as well, including Petsmart and Bank of America.

Locally, Aurora Health Care allows its personnel one tattoo, no larger than two square inches, on their leg, ankle or foot, according to its employee appearance policy.

Potowatomi Hotel and Casino has allowed tattoos for at least the last decade, Potowatomi External Communications Manager Ryan Amundson said.

“We work in a fun, looser environment,” Amundson said. “Being a little more liberal with those kinds of standards helps to keep that energy up.”

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Among institutions reevaluating tattoos are several branches of the U.S. military.

In 2015, the U.S. Army changed its regulations limiting recruits to a maximum of four tattoos, each no larger than their hand. Now, the only restrictions are against face, neck and hand tattoos, and tattoos with intolerant messages. The Navy and Air Force have both recently changed their tattoo policies as well.

For young people looking for work, these changing policies are welcomed improvements.

Ida Lucchesi is a college student studying social work and dance. When she isn’t attending class, Lucchesi works as a barista at Colectivo on Humbolt Blvd. in Riverwest. She has seven tattoos, a few of which sit proudly above her elbow, plainly visible when she’s wearing a T-shirt. The tattoos are a mix of art and sentiment for Lucchesi.

She said her job at Colectivo isn’t affected by her tattoos, partly because most of her interactions are fleeting, but if she worked in a corporate environment, that might change.

“People are just passing through,” Lucchesi said. “So I’m not thinking about how they perceive me as much as I probably would if they were more consistent encounters.”

She said Colectivo allows its employees to have visible tattoos, so long as they aren’t on the face or neck. She said many of her coworkers have tattoos as well.

While Lucchesi is free to show off her tattoos at work for now, she said she has thought about whether having tattoos will hurt her chances of getting a job in the future.

“I was thinking I shouldn’t get any on my forearms,” Lucchesi said. “Even if it is more acceptable, you never know what people’s underlying perceptions are.”

Research underscores some of these changing attitudes.

A 2015 study published in the International Journal of Innovative Research and Development surveyed both a group of professionals and a group of MBA students about professionalism.

When asked how they perceived employees with tattoos, 60 percent of the professionals said they would view that employee as “careless,” while 52 percent of the students said they would view the employee as “easygoing.”

One reason millennials are more likely to be accepting of tattoos in the workplace may be because they’re more likely to have tattoos themselves.

In a 2015 Harris poll, nearly 50 percent of millennial respondents said they had a tattoo.

By contrast, in a 1999 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 21 percent of respondents said they or a family member had a tattoo. But in a 2014 version of the same poll, that number nearly doubled, to 40 percent.

Despite the changes, Reiter said he doesn’t think tattoos will become so prevalent that they will be the new norm.

“I don’t know that people with tattoos would want it to be totally accepted,” Reiter said. “There’s an edge to it.”

He also said that if it did become the new norm, the industry could actually suffer.

“At some point, not having a tattoo could be the new tattoo,” Reiter said. “If Mom’s doing it, it can’t be cool.”